


fighting evil (by moonlight) and other hero things

by mouseymightymarvellous



Series: run baby run [7]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Heroes, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Thor: The Dark World, Pre-Avengers: Age of Ultron, Sam Wilson is a Good Person
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 11:15:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9437840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mouseymightymarvellous/pseuds/mouseymightymarvellous
Summary: Sometimes, heroes punch Nazis or aliens or robots in the face. Sometimes, heroes hand out clean water or teach sex ed or rebuild homes. Sometimes, heroes first have to save themselves. (Sometimes, saving yourself requires saving others too.)Or, the No Capes Necessary Adventures (plus some burning Hydra to the ground).Alternatively, the story of how Darcy fulfilled her childhood dreams of becoming a Magical Girl (sort of, not really, James refuses to buy her a wand, damnit).





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys~ Long time no see. Oops. The muse has been a fickle bitch lately, and utterly disinterested in anything I actually should have been writing. But at last, she appears! So here, have some fic about Sam. I swear Bucky will show up eventually. Just, you know, not this chapter.
> 
> The summary for this fic could have also gone: _Wherein our intrepid heroes are volunteers by day, vigilantes by night, but always, always heroes._
> 
> Just as an FYI (in case it hasn't been clear from earlier fic): No Capes Necessary is a (fictional) grassroots organization working all over the world to fight against the forces of evil. Because not everybody can don a cape and head out to punch Nazis or aliens or robots in the face, but anybody can reach out a gentle hand to help. (They’re EMTs and artists and engineers and hackers and accountants and poets and everything in between. They’re just ordinary people standing up because it is right, because there is no other option when faced with disaster or evil, because being a hero doesn’t require a cape, just the bravery to be kind when the world is burning.)

Sam really isn’t sure how he ended up here.

Alright, so Sam vividly remembers how he ended up here (in terrifying, technicolour detail that sometimes wakes him, screaming), but he still isn’t sure some days why he let himself get dragged into this superhero thing, this fight against Hydra, this quest for long-lost friends. Except, well. How could he not?

(Sam, too, was once a little boy who wore a cape around his shoulders and thought that if he believed hard enough, he could jump off a ledge and fly.)

Riley is never coming back, the only way Riley ever came back was in the pine box whose phantom weight Sam still caries on his shoulder. But Barnes, Barnes might just one day find his way back to Steve.

Sam doesn’t think it will happen, not when he knows all too well what trauma can do to a person, let alone those impossible seventy years of it, but he hopes. He’s helpless to do anything other than hope.

So while Steve is out there clad in the stars and stripes, fighting Hydra head on, Sam is here, in the poorest district of Córdoba, Argentina, looking for a ghost.

He’s never been so glad that his mom insisted he stick with Spanish in high school, not that it’s doing him a lot of good, rusty and basic as it is.

JARVIS had managed to narrow down the area he has to search from the broad and only minimally helpful “i <3 mimosas. u ask jessica from accounting out yet? (ps try cordoba)” that Natasha had texted Steve at three am four days ago. Sam does his best not to wonder at Natasha’s sources or what she might be getting up to.

Unfortunately, even JARVIS has limitations; namely, the lack of video cameras in certain parts of the city. While JARVIS had narrowed down the possible areas of the city Barnes might be hiding in, it’s still a city of well over a million people. Sam’s feet hurt from the sheer amount of walking he’s done and his nose aches with the phantom pain of having metaphorical doors slammed repeatedly in his face.

Finally though, finally, he’s had enough people admit to seeing Barnes’ around (or, to be fair, what they thought might have been Barnes) that he thinks he might have a decent lead: No Capes Necessary. And that makes almost sense, actually, because the name is familiar from previous trips out to chase down sightings of Barnes; Sam’s just never payed the NGO much attention before.

But here he is, standing feeling oddly wrong footed in front of a worn collection of business fronts, one of which has a sign for No Capes Necessary written in several languages hanging in the window. He thinks the sign might be written on cardboard, but what it lacks in formality, it more than makes up in the impressive lettering and endearing cartoon superheroes.

He’s done his research, he just wasn’t quite expecting the cartoon superheroes.

But Sam has faced more terrifying things than Steve’s strangely cute face staring out at him from a cardboard sign; he braces himself, and walks through the front door.

(Man, he is really hoping that Barnes isn’t sitting manning the front counter or something. That would be more than Sam could handle right now.)

“Hola!” the young man at the front desk greets Sam as he walks in.

The lobby is a riot of colours, full of pictures and posters and slogans on signs. It’s a bit overwhelming, and the teenager at the desk decked out in an eye-searing yellow shirt isn’t exactly helping.

“Hola,” Sam answers, rapping his knuckles lightly on a pink poster taped to the desk. “  
Espero que puedas ayudarme.”

The teenager blinks, and then laughs. “I can do English, if you prefer,” he offers, his accent heavy but his words clear.

Sam laughs back, more than a bit rueful. “That obvious, hey?”

“Just a bit.” The teen shrugs. He looks more amused than sorry. “What is it you were hoping I could help you with?”

“I was wondering if you recognize this man.” Sam places the a series of photos on the desk, ranging from an old picture of Barns during the war to grainy stills captured from security cameras over the past several months.

The teen goes immediately wary, one hand slipping under the desk, presumably for a panic button of some sort or his phone, Sam is guessing.

“He’s not in any trouble,” Sam continues, keeping his voice level and calm, his body language non-threatening. “He’s a friend.”

“Why would he be hiding if he was a friend?” the teen asks, and Sam aches for the ancient wariness in his voice. So young, too young, and yet so careful.

“Because he doesn’t remember that he has friends,” Sam offers: the truth. He has a feeling that the too young kid in front of him will recognize a lie for what it is.

The teen stares at Sam for a long moment, but eventually nods, and lets go of whatever he’s been holding under the desk. He takes his time looking at each of the pictures. “I don’t recognize him, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been here. We get a lot of volunteers, and I only work part time around school. You should head over to the current work site. Chances are if he’s here at all, that’s where he’ll be. Or, at least, one of the people in charge of coordinating volunteers will recognize him.”

He jots down the address and leaves it with the stack of pictures.

“Thanks.” Sam smiles, gathering up the pictures and slipping them back into his bag. The address gets inputed into his cell phone, both to get him a map for navigating and to send over to JARVIS with a query for information on the location site.

He nods to the teen as he walks out, and doesn’t take offence at the glimpse of a phone going to the kid’s ear, rapid-fire Spanish filling the office behind him. Just aches for children who grow old too soon.

##

“Huh. Córdoba seems pretty far to come just to volunteer,” the woman who Sam has been directed over to says.

Sam blinks. “Excuse me?”

She rolls her eyes. “Are there really no places closer to D.C. for you to volunteer your counselling skills or did they kick you out after the whole plummeting helicarriers thing?”

And, yeah, that did not clear things up at all. “Do I know you?”

“Probably not.” The woman shrugs. “But I know who you are. Wilson, right? With the wings?”

Who is this woman? Sam handled Captain America and the Black Widow showing up on his doorstep asking for sanctuary was aplomb, but this woman has him thrown. Some of his utter confusion must show on his face because she smirks.

“Sorry. I’m Darcy Lewis. I tazed Thor.”

Sam blinks. Again.

Awesome.

“And how do you know me?”

Darcy Lewis scratches the back of her head, attempting to appear sheepish. It’s not very effective. “I might have made the most out of the Black Widow’s file leak.” Then she stares right at him, an eyebrow raised. “Plus, I read the news.”

Which, alright, fair.

Sam just isn’t used to people recognizing him on the spot.

And she seems much too prepared to find him here, even if she does recognize him.

“I was expecting someone, but I wasn’t expecting you,” Lewis tells him, tapping the radio at her hip as if in answer to his thoughts.

Ah. She was warned he was coming.

“What can we do for you? I don’t exactly think rebuilding a block of apartment buildings is really the Avengers’ jurisdiction.”

It isn’t a question.

Sam’s maybe a bit sudden in pulling out the pictures to hand to her, but he kind of wants her to feel as wrong-footed as he has this whole trip. It’s petty, he realizes as he hands the stack over, but it’s too late now.

She tazed Thor after all. That means she’s a friend. Probably.

(Thor wouldn’t have let someone who tazed him walk around if they were dangerous. At least, Sam hopes not. Although, knowing Thor, it’s equally probable he would have left her alive if he thought that she had “won the battle fairly” out of some sort of archaic warrior’s code. Sam might have just miscalculated.)

Her face is calm as she flips through the pictures, but she lingers on the last one, the old, faded thing with Barnes smirking, still young and bright, not knowing what horrors are about to befall him. Her face darkens with something Sam doesn’t quite know how to place, but she blinks, and it’s gone.

“Have you seen this man?” Sam asks once she looks up from the pictures. She’s one of the main international volunteer coordinators for this project; if Barnes has been around, she should recognize him.

Lewis taps a finger on the picture at the top of the stack. “Am I supposed to pretend I don’t know who this is?” she demands, one eyebrow raised. “Or am I not supposed to ask questions?”

Sam passes a hand over his face, muttering “Fucking Rogers,” under his breath like an oath.

Sam cannot believe he’s chasing the ghost of a long-dead war hero across South America. This is not in any world what he expected to be doing when he was sitting, enraptured, through movies in grade eleven history.

“Let’s just say I’m trying to track down an old war buddy for my good friend Steve?” he tries.

Lewis barks out a laugh. “Sure, Mr. Definitely-Not-A-Superhero, we can stick with that. It does mean you aren’t getting the story of how I tazed Thor, though.”

“Aw man, you’re killing me Lewis.” Sam grins. And it is too bad, really. It must be a pretty good story if she’s this unfazed about the proof of dead men come to life in her hands.

“He doesn’t look like this anymore,” she says, shaking the picture of Sargent Barnes lightly. She turns to some of the more recent pictures. “This might be James, though. I hadn’t made the connection. Even after aliens, I thought I was just imagining that he looked familiar.”

“He’s going by James,” Sam asks, surprised. That’s something to think on, later.

Lewis hums an agreement.

“When was the first time you saw him?”

“We actually arrived in Córdoba about the same time. Couple of weeks ago,” Lewis offers.

Sam nods. That fits with the timeline he and JARVIS have put together. “Do you know when he’ll be here next?”

“You just missed him, actually, by an hour or so.”

Sam rolls his eyes. Of course he did. He would get this close only for Barnes to slip through his fingers.

(Not that he’s really sure yet he wants to catch Barnes. Not when Barnes is doing his best to run. Sam knows that Steve wants Bucky back, Sam just doesn’t know if he believes that’s possible. Not after everything. Maybe it’s best for everything if James Barnes just disappears.

Except, of course, that Sam knows that this is not a thing that Steve will ever be able to let go. Not when there’s still a breath left in his body. Because Sam knows what he would do for the chance to have Riley back.

The answer is: too much.)

“Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“Tomorrow? But he might not be back at all. He’s pretty skittish, and if he is who I think he is, then he might know that you’re here. Or, at least, that someone looking for him is here.”

There’s a warning there, in Lewis’ clear gaze.

Sam wonders if Barnes might know not to come back because someone told him not to.

They just missed each other by an hour.

Lewis wears a radio at her waist and knew he was coming.

The teen at the main office made a call as Sam walked away.

(If his suspicion is right, Sam doesn’t think he blames them, regardless of how much his feet ache. He just doesn’t know if he can take another one of Steve’s tired, heartbroken smiles when he returns, once again, empty handed.)

Yeah. Sam has a feeling that Barnes won’t be making an appearance tomorrow.

“Stop by tomorrow. Worst that happens is he doesn’t show up and we put you to work,” Lewis orders.

Sam could spend the night trying to track down Barnes’ living arrangements.

He doesn’t.

Lewis warns him that he’ll want a good night’s sleep if he’s going to be helping build roofs tomorrow, after all.

##

Sam spends almost a month in Córdoba helping rebuild homes and giving lessons on dealing with victims of trauma.

Barnes never does reappear.

When he finally heads back home, it’s with reluctance. He likes his wings, but it’s a different kind of heroism when he helps families move into the apartments that have replaced the ones they lost to fire.

Natasha calls though, with another lead, and his mom is asking if he’ll be there for his niece’s seventh birthday.

“Maybe next time I see you, I’ll tell you about the time I tazed Thor,” Darcy says as she drops him at the airport in a borrowed car.

Sam laughs. “I’m keeping you to that, Lewis.”

“Right on. Bye Sam, tell Thor and Jane I say hi.”

“Can do.” Sam pauses in the open car door and tugs on the edge of his worn No Capes Necessary shirt (it’s an eye-searing purple, he’s expecting Clint to steal it). “Tell Barnes I say hello when you see him next, yeah?”

She isn’t obvious about it, but Darcy startles. “I don’t—”

Sam bites back on ironic laughter, and then sighs. “I know, I know. ‘He must have seen you,’ right Darce? You don’t know where he is.”

“Sam,” Darcy starts, and trails off. “I’m not sorry.”

Sam just watches her for a moment, the softness around her mouth and eyes. “Good,” he finally manages. “He needs people in his corner. And tell him to stay safe. And, if you don’t think it’ll hurt, that Steve misses him.”

Darcy bites her lip, her eyes bright. “You’re a good man, Sam Wilson,” she says. “I’m glad I met you.”

“I’m glad I met you too, Darcy Lewis.”

“Stay safe.”

Sam nods. “I’ll do my best.”

The door closes firmly between them.

Sam doesn’t look back as he walks into the airport. But he does send out a prayer to the universe for all the heroes of the world, that they live another day to reach out a kind hand.

(Sam was once a little boy who wore a cape around his shoulders and thought that if he believed hard enough, he could jump off a ledge and fly. He has wings these days, but he still thinks that if you believe hard enough, anyone can be a hero, anyone can save the day.)

**Author's Note:**

> I’m pretty sure it’s obvious, but just in case it isn’t obvious: Darcy is a lying liar who lies and Sam has been duped. Darcy even feels almost bad about it; Sam seems like a nice guy. But she doesn’t care how much Steve Rogers wants his best friend back, it’s not about Steve, it can’t be. It’s about James, and the right to choose. (Sam, if Darcy had told him, would tell her he agrees. Darcy just doesn’t want to put him in the position where he’ll have to decide whether or not he can live with lying to Captain America, or worse, his good friend Steve.)


End file.
